The Royal Navy's new billion-pound Type 45 destroyers are back in the news again for unfortunate reasons, with the head of an influential parliamentary committee saying it's "disgraceful" that they will enter service without their French-supplied primary weapons ever having been fired from the ships.
HMS <em>Daring</em> during …

COMMENTS

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What hope is there

for getting the new Aircraft carriers ready on time and budget - sorry whose time and budget are we talking about here? Slim or none?

It really is disgraceful and inexcusable but will anybody be subject to review and sanction ... --- ... I doubt it....

(Not) Sorry, these procurements and commissionings are complicated affairs and if only you knew the half of it you'd be surprised it was only this late and over budget. We've only been building warships for 500 years... Now, about our bonus...

One hopes they have a drummer

Very true

Looking at the equipment list, whilst many of the systems are European, almost nothing (apart from the hull) is British and there's a fair amount of American hardware and technology in there. So, why not just buy the whole thing from America. It can take Harpoons, no plans to fit. It can take Phalanx, may fit when some are found. It could fire Tomahawk, but might need Type 41 launchers for this. So, what's the point?

Less capable than the Korean navy?

left hand down a bit..

Let's hope they never meet a Sudanese pirate dinghy. It would be a short fight, and £1bn goes to Davy Jones's locker. Alternatively the pirates take it into port and kit it out with some serious firepower

Would the Aegis ships be fully capable?

Hmmmmm

In a previous life I worked for a Defence company and have seen just this sort of dithering from the MoD on every single occasion. I'm amazed we have any kind of mechanisation for any of our armed forces. Think back to the days when we had the most accomplished Navy in the known world, now we're sending out vessels that aren't even properly/appropriately armed.....

Lewis is right, we suck

I never understood why we can't build anything these days, if some hack sitting in a london bar can figure this stuff out, why can't the MoD, ask yourself where is the money going and why do we refuse to use good kit when we get the chance.

I can remember I think it was jeremy clarkson going on about some guy in the 19th century who had the great idea of putting a corkscrew "guide" on the inside of rifle barrels, therefore spinning the bullet. The spinning bullet, would travel further in a straight line than one without.

Guess which one we bought??? It is a british invention to if I remember correctly!!!! We stayed with the shit gun barrel, why??? I mean, you are PURPOSELY reducing your capacity

What we need, is to get rid of the "old guard" the ones with too many hands trapped in too many pockets, what we need, are people to think like those kids who spend 1000 quid on a graphics card because it's the "best".

We need to buy more of the best and less of the shit that puts millions into the pockets of "interested parties".

Placebo(ats)

Since we seem to be managing with gunless-boat diplomacy, why not try no-boats-at-all diplomacy? We'd save a boat load of money. Seriously, how much would the armed forces cost if their role was limited to defending these islands, rather than fighting American wars half-way round the world?

@"how come the US suppliers didn't win in the Invitation To Tender "

I believe the usual procedure is for the politically favoured lash-up being awared the deal on the basis of a bid structured on Real_Cost*0.3, Real_Time*0.5, Real_Jobs_Created*3, Perceived_Strategic_Independence*15. This is formula is usually enough to edge out whatever is on offer from the US/Israelis/Swedes/Russians/Brazilians/Congolese/Ukranians until such time as it's too late to cancel the order for the gold-plated turd.

IME RFPs etc are usually written to justify the choice of a particular vendor or product, not the other way round - I can't imagine the public sector is any different

Vs Korean Navy

It’s a bit worse than that I’m afraid – ROKS Sejong The Great has greater VLS capacity than the Burkes, as well as the Japanese Kongo class (128 vs 96), has 16 Harpoons as well as Goalkeeper CIWS and RAM missiles, with which the US Navy are replacing Phalanx with. She was launched in 2007 and commissioned into service in 2008, passing her weapons testing phase ahead of time! Basically, South Korea built her to the Burke template in a local yard using local skills but using readily available, existing components, mostly from the US (including the BAE gun!). Unlike the UK, the Korean government had a role and a capability gap they wanted to fill and did something about it, all at the cost of about $923 million apiece!

What I don’t understand is the fascination with being independent of the US, when at the same time the Royal Navy retired the Sea Harrier citing that they would be operating under the protection of friendly airpower – neglecting the point that if an Invincible class carrier is needed in an operation, then surely land based aircraft are unavailable (otherwise why need a carrier?) so there must be a US carrier handy and indeed working with the UK (I’m discounting the Indian, Spanish and other carrier-operating countries as they each only have one Invincible sized “sea control ship”).

It seems that everyone in government has forgotten the Falklands campaign, when those nice allies forgot to lend us a supercarrier…

@Lewis is right, we suck

Actually the Baker rifle was used heavily during the peninsular campaign, albeit that the standard British Pattern musket was used in far greater numbers. The problem was that there were only a few regiments that were fully comfortable not only with using them, but with the tactics they enabled (and even fewer officers).

The Baker rifle enabled the Light companies to get further forward as skirmishers, and inflict greater damage from a greater distance. Black Bob Crauford only had the chance to get a few regiments up to speed on the new tactics at Shorncliffe before the Peninsula campaign, partly because the less forward looking general staff (fighting the last war as usual) didn't believe in anything but the drill book of musket volleys, although, to be fair, at musket distance they were bloody deadly compared to the prevalent French tactic of advancing in column, where only the front two ranks can fire.

It should be pointed out that Napolean eschewed the rifle as well. Also, that one of the most effective rifle carrying regiments, the 60th, was an American Loyalist regiment.

accuracy?

(1) The 'Burke carriers either 96 missiles or 48 missiles and a flight deck, rated for "up to" 2 helicopters, not both.

(2) The Burke can guide up to 3 missiles at once. The way the AEGIS system works, you can normally have a few more missiles in the air & flying towards targets at the same time - the missiles "keep going in a straight line" until the ship provides updates. Conversely, the Sampson / ASTER can guide 12 at once, and they have their own terminal guidance. So it can have 16 in the air at once actively homing onto evading targets.

*** So that makes it 4 times as good as AEGIS, doesn't it? ***

(3) The SM-2 is an evolved anti-aircraft missile, with limited maneouverability. The ASTER was designed from the gound up as an anti-missile-missile, with ludicrous maneouverability. (Feel free to look up the details yourselves.)

(4) No reason why you can't fit SM-6 (the ABM version) missiles on a Type-45 as well.

(5) The Burke does not have enough electrical power to drive an ABM radar. There is talk of putting a generator in the hanger (replacing the helicopters) to give it a few more MW... The Type-45 has Integrated Electric Propulsion, so (unlike the Burke) the full 50+ MW motive power of the ships engines is used to generate electricity, and then made available to the motors, radar, as needed.

(6) These ships have an expected service life of 35-55 years. Rail Guns are expected to be available in 15-20 years. (The US naving is funding BAE for this work, amongst others.) They can only be refitted onto ships with Electric Propulsion. When this happens, the current US destroyers will become obsolete.

(7) The predecessor to the Sampson was used for ABM trials. This probably tells us alot about how good Sampson is in the ABM role.

(8) Sampson is _very_ resistant to jamming, as it is able to generate and aim radar nulls at anyone that tries to jam it. AEGIS can't do this.

(9) Burke (DDG-51) class destroyers are normally quoted as costing $2 billion, e.g. in the latest US defence budget, that has just ordered another one.

re. Lewis Page

"While I'd prefer the ships to be entirely British, alas our obsession with open competition means our industries have not been protected, unlike the French. At least this ship is part British."

The only thing that the MOD's budget is used for is to keep British manufacturers (mainly one though) in business; whatever crap they turn out!

And as for the following statement:

"So, how come the US suppliers didn't win in the Invitation To Tender procurement process?"

The "tender" process at the MOD tends to start with "Does your company name have the word 'British' in it?" along with "Are any of your shareholder's British?" and "Does your company employ a significant number if British voters?". You could offer the MOD the fucking Death Star for a fiver, but unless you can answer yes to these they won't be interested **.

Seriously, we're left with a pathetic defense industry that doesn't have to compete with anyone for MOD money, it need only employ a few thousand British people (even though BAE employs more Americans than Brits) and it can use those jobs to hold the Governement and the MOD to ransom. The ransom will be paid in cash by UK taxpayers and blood by UK service personnel; money spent on crap like this means no money for quality infantry equipment and proper air support.

The UK defence budget should be spent on defending the UK, not keeping a few highly paid "engineers" in work; if BAE can compete then let them, but every project to date that they've been involved with has either been delivered late (e.g. Eurofighter), over-budget (Eurofighter), with bits missing (Type 45), a bit crap to start with (Tornado F3) and sometimes not at all (Nimrod AEW - I actually saw these at BAE Woodford). They couldn't even make a rifle, arguably the simplest and most basic weapons system, that works properly (the british made SA80 was eventually fixed by the German Heckler & Koch during the brief period H&K were owned by BAE). If these guys were builders, how many times would you use them before looking elsewhere?

As a graduate of aeronautical engineering, I feel very sorry for the employees of BAE; but not enough to keep paying for rubbish. The money wasted with them would be better spent elsewhere, developing a proper engineering industry that can compete on merit rather than the pathetic "buy British" mentality that seems to obscure some people's thinking on these matters.

** Note: Even if the UK were to buy a Death Star, the three services would argue whether it should be operated by the Navy (because it's a "ship") the RAF (because it "flies") or the Blues and Royals (because of the shiny helmets), before putting into storage for two years because BAE managed to get in on the deal and their bit is late.

Yes, everything from the US is massively supperior...

Do we want (or need) a navy?

We don't have an empire. We don't need to defend (or fail to defend) Singapore. And the idea that we do anything useful with the navy is just a navy-sourced myth.

As the navy has now shrunk to the point of utter uselessness, we might as well go the whole hog and get rid of it. Have small, fast patrol boats for inshore work. And that's it. Site a few missiles on land, and get rid of Trident (and its replacement). This will save billions. As a sop, the "navy" can be in charge of the missile stations. It will give them some buttons to practise pressing.

This won't be popular. The navy was once useful, but now it's not. It used to have a role, but now it doesn't. It's a fabulous waste of money, and it's considered a joke the world over. As we can't fight the Falklands again, we might as well give it up now.

HMS Daring?

Come on, Lewis. What would be Daring about chasing a few dhows with 48 cruise missiles and a boatload of machine guns? That would be HMS OutOfMyFuckingWaySonny. Real Daring would be "cutlasses between the teeth lads, and grab a line". Clearly what the MoD have in mind. Where's Douglas Fairbanks when you need him?

re. accuracy?

"(6) These ships have an expected service life of 35-55 years. Rail Guns are expected to be available in 15-20 years. (The US naving is funding BAE for this work, amongst others.) They can only be refitted onto ships with Electric Propulsion. When this happens, the current US destroyers will become obsolete."

A) If it kicks off in the next two years, these ships will be lucky to last 35-55 minutes.

B) If and when better Rail Guns become a reality, the USA will develop dedicated platforms for them; even if Rail Gun technology does become available in the lifetime of these hulls, there's no guarantee that they can be fitted to them.

C) If the yanks rely on BAE to deliver rail guns they're in for a long and expensive wait!

This all comes back to a navy that wants to shoot down aircraft from ships rather than operate carrier based weapons, and a defence contractor that's happy to take the money for trying.

Without carriers the Royal Navy is toothless, even if these ships worked 110% the Navy will be unable to provide any useful military capability other than self defence; air support? seaborne assault? Attacking targets more than 20km inland? The Navy isn't really equipped for these roles; it spends all its budget on escort ships and has nothing to escort! However you do need escorts in a navy where the best route to a brass hat is via command of an escort.

If ever a branch of the civil service needed major reform....

Sadly, it would be the branch entrusted with protecting the country from foreign threats in an increasingly dangerous world. The idea that the French/Italians could produce an air defense system that could match AEGIS in the near term is, quite frankly laughable.

Well this goes to prove something

That we can still build ships faster than the weapons suppliers can build weapons

And considering their day to day job will be escorting 2 aircraft carriers which wont be finished until 2015.... its nice to have a head start for once instead of the more usual situation where the carriers go to sea without escorts.......

Oh and for all you slagging off the projects as 'jobs for the scots' please try and remember that there are other shipyards in England which rely on government work to keep them going

@Michael Fremlins

For Britain to at least have a seat at the table in world affairs, we need a navy. Power projection with air power is somewhat fleeting at best. You can send a bomber, but it can't loiter for long, costs a bomb (apologies for the pun) to develop one with a useful (i.e. global) range and payload and requires a massive support infrastructure in terms of in-flight refueling, overseas basing etc.

A ship has good endurance and (Type 45 excluded) formidable firepower and flexibility, providing the ability to police against piracy, or support an assault force. Total up the cost of a destroyer say, £2 billion, versus the cost of a squadron of B2s.

There's a reason ground based ballistic missiles are not common - they make a lovely target. Nice and static, easy to target and take out with a pre-emptive strike or special forces. Kind of hard to counter an SSBN that can loiter for months and no-one knows where it is.

The Darings are a complete waste of time. We should have been looking at a number of multi-role destroyers - something that has good air defence, but more importantly can provide anti surface capabilities. Both in terms of gunnery and missiles.

@"it's all gone pants since 1997"

Nothing at all to do with the Thatcher & Major gov't, then? Don't get me wrong, Labour are completely useless tossers, but anybody who thinks the Tories aren't at least as bad either has a very short memory or is a mug. Me, I'm just bemoaning the absence of a Monster Raving Loony candidate for my locale, at least they're honest about what they are.

As for the article, there's already been so much blathering about "UK crap, America awesome" from this source that I've rather run out of patience to try to figure out if it's credible or not. I'll assume probably not.

Good warships?

The Navy has been going adrift ever since they realised they might have to shoot at aircraft.

The Americans made some of the same mistakes, such as ammunition that's too heavy to easily handle, but at least they mounted their guns so they could point in the right direction. And they developed much better fire control.

The modern guns are a long way from the wartime 4,5 and 5 inch guns, but it does look little bit too much like habit. For a lot of jobs, the Italian 3-inch guns look a lot more useful, and you can carry three of them for the same mass.

@Michael

Are you joking? Without a navy, any country with a few ancient destroyers could decide to blockade us. In case you hadn't noticed, we are a small island and rely heavily on imports. If North Korea decides to launch their crappy nukes at us rather than America/Japan/China, how would we expect to shoot them down? Ask the Americans nicely? How would we turn their country into a piece of radioactive glass in return? and don't say replace Trident with ICBMs, no matter where they were placed some idiot would complain, not to mention the government would probably cock it up somehow.

Even if the navy spend most of their time shooting pirates in Somalia right now, that doesn't mean they won't be needed for something more important. Look at the Falklands, one of the few wars where both sides had (almost) equivalent technology levels. Would we have won without a navy, without asking America for help?

Maintaining a nuclear deterrent is possibly the single most important thing the MoD has to do, we can't just rely on America to protect us with theirs. If any should be scrapped it is most of the army, we only keep the parts that are actually useful for DEFENCE rather than invading other countries.

(And no, I am not associated with the military in any way and most likely never will be)

@Michael Fremlins

I take it your not very into history Michael, and I’m surprised you did not offer the logical conclusion to your argument. Why bother to have a military at all, just load up with nuclear ICBMs and say if anyone touches us we nuke them.

Unfortunately, that does not protect British shipping from pirates does it? It does not allow us, who are members of the UN to enforce sanctions on countries like North Korea by stopping and searching their shipping does it?

The PEOPLE who are employed by US to keep US safe do so knowing that they may have to die doing their job. Not something many of the posters here have in their job contract. With that in mind, I don’t think that it’s too much to want those people to have the best kit available.

The scum running this county into the ground are more concerned about themselves and who’s back to scratch rather than just looking around for decent kit. There is an odd stigma about weapons tech in this country I can’t get my head around. We used to be able to create good tech, then politicians sold them to the wrong people or political pressure cancelled promising tech such as the TSR-2.

Lewis is right to point out the stupidity of having a boat chuff around for two years without its main armament. It’s a micro version of the shit this country is in now.

I think it’s time to break out madam guillotine! Once it was let them eat cake, now it’s let them subsidise my spending and my meals at the Commons.

PAAMS

Utter Garbage

Well as my last post didn't get allowed cause people don't like criticism I'll try again......

"A) If it kicks off in the next two years, these ships will be lucky to last 35-55 minutes"

I think you'll find if a major conflict kicked off in the next 2 years, the missiles would become available PDQ. Seadart wasn't fully operational prior to the Falkalnds but they still managed a few kills with it.

"Without carriers the Royal Navy is toothless, even if these ships worked 110% the Navy will be unable to provide any useful military capability other than self defence; air support? seaborne assault? Attacking targets more than 20km inland? The Navy isn't really equipped for these roles"

Oh really, so Royal Marines didn't attack Afghanistan and Iraq from the decks of RN assault ships and aircraft carriers? Tomahawk and the Naval Strike WIng can't attack more than 20Km inland? Whilst not geared up for land attack in a huge way, it does have the ability to do it. Take a proper look at the composition of the RN before you make bland statements. But you are correct in that the RN desperately needs Air Cover from a carrier air wing.

"However you do need escorts in a navy where the best route to a brass hat is via command of an escort"

All medium sized ships are able to perform a variety of roles, including anti piracy/terror, counter narcotics, and disaster / humanitarian relief. The escorts did a good job of rescuing British citizens from Lebanon a couple of years back. Senior Officers from the Warfare Dept have to be able to prove their competency of command at all levels, starting with small ship command all the way up to aircraft carriers and assault ships and then Task Groups. Would you accept an infantryman becoming a General having never commanded an infantry regiment?!

There are problems with T45, buying the French launchers instead of American Mk41 launchers could well prove to be an expensive mistake - however the MoD couldn't justify spending the extra money because it has been decided that currently there is no requirement for T45 to carry Tomahawk, these are carried by fleet submarines. You can blame the MoD for a lot (and I do) but you CANNOT blame them for Defence Policy, all they do is implement it.

People who have never even seen a warship, let alone know what they do or what constitutes a good one, but feel they can comment on the back of some negative press really make me mad. There are plenty of good articles both for and against T45 elsewhere on the net, don't just believe 1 person's biased opinion.

the question is....

... but can you hit a satelite with it?

"This high-powered (four megawatt) radar is able to perform search, track and missile guidance functions simultaneously with a capability of over 100 targets." Not sure how that's allocated though. commander_mike, you seem to have good details on those systems, do you have a internet reference you can share? I like looking at random stuff like that.

interesting..

Compartive pricing...

"Aegis ships in a Scottish tin" would likely be vastly more expensive than Aegis ships in a Korean tin. Surely this is obvious to anyone who has ever bought something from Korea and a similar item from Scotland.

There is also the greed factor: given that Bath Iron Works is a corporation interested in making profit, and the UK has a greater capacity to pay than Korea, I'm sure the price negotiated woudl increase sharply.

There is also another thing to consider: the Arleigh Burke class is pretty old already. This means that it is tried and tested and it's flaws have been identified (plus), but that it does not take advantage of the latest possible technology (minus). The Type 45 is the compliment to this: it has not been tried or tested, and its flaws remain a mystery, however when it is complete it should have some of the latest tech available. I suppose it could be possible to try to get in now for the Burke's replacements in 2020: the Zumwalt class. But, this would be astoundingly expensive, I'm sure, would not be delivered for at least 11 years (more likely 15-20), and, of course, is even less tested than the Type 45s.

Perhaps it would be better just to get a mixture, 1 or 2 Aegis destroyers to handle the "now," a couple Type 45s for "tomorrow," and maybe even a request to be able to order some Zumwalts after they are 5 or 10 years old for "the next day."

That US ship sounds great.

Overpriced carrier

You are just lucky that this ship wasn't a US one. If it were the cost overruns would be triple:(

There are two sides to the weapons supplier. If you get the French ones, the shells will never hit the target, if you get the American shells, they will blow up as they come out of the barrel. Of course if the British supplied them they would have to wait for the unions so I am not sure where you should go to get munitions.

@commander_mike

Makes sense. The T45 is a hull that will carry a number of weapons and systems over a long life, so big roomy hull and decent proposal system makes a lot of sense.

Being the first of her type, complex weapon systems will take a while to be fully integrated, but you could imagine that should something like Korean or Iran get hot, then a PAAMS system could be thrown onboard pretty quick.

Lewis when dismissing the current armament as being 'a couple of guns', does rather overlook the piece of kit sitting on the flight-deck; even older model Sea Lynx are well proven to be capable against small boats/patrol craft using a range of missiles. Against typical pirates, even an air-defense ship like the Darling pre-PAAMS could be lethal.

@Dave Harris

Thanks for the back story. The general overview though I think sounds the same, that too many old guard are slowing us down and preventing us from doing what we SHOULD do, in favor of keeping some old tactic alive that should be removed cause it's out of date.

Basically, what we need to do is stop holding onto the past and just embrace the future and anyone who doesnt do that, go sit behind a desk somewhere unimportant.

@Ted Green

Typical, the second someone gets a whiff of "someone is to blame" you all start pushing out, brown is responsible.

Mostly this is a fun game, however in this case, you are completely wrong in all aspects. Brown isnt responsible for this mess, this goes back 300 years mate!! We didnt just start doing this during the labour years, we did it for the last 3 centuries and the reason is because we fail to see new tactics and new opportunities, people are scared of losing their "positions" and therefore dig in, to the detriment of everyone included.

I can understand why someone would not want their cushy position to be compromised by some new tech or tactics, but I dont care, I want that person to see the value of NOT being the shittest country in the world.